Bashir’s Islamist allies pelted with rocks in Khartoum

KHARTOUM: Assailants hurled rocks at leading members of Sudan’s top Islamist party on Saturday at a meeting in Khartoum, injuring 32 of them, a party official told AFP.

The Popular Congress Party (PCP), an ally of ousted president Omar al-Bashir’s regime, was holding a meeting of its shura council when it came under "attack", said Suheir Salah, its deputy undersecretary. "When the participants in the meeting took a break, they came under attack from a group of people who threw rocks at them," she said, without identifying the assailants.

"Thirty-two members of the shura council have been injured. Ten cars of our party were also destroyed."

The PCP, founded by late Islamist leader Hassan Turabi, had two ministers of state in Bashir’s cabinet, including Salah, and seven lawmakers in parliament.

Turabi, who died in March 2016, was a leading force behind the 1989 coup that brought Bashir to power, ushering in an Islamist regime that hosted Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden from 1992 to 1996 in Sudan.

Turabi founded the PCP after his dismissal from Bashir’s ruling National Congress Party amid a power struggle a decade after the coup.

Shortly after protests erupted against Bashir’s government in December, the PCP called for a probe into the deaths of protesters in clashes with security forces. Officials say at least 65 people died in protest-related violence during the protests.